The Historical Status of The Portuguese Language

Portuguese is spoken by about 250 million people in Portugal, Brazil, and other current and former Portuguese colonies. It is the sixth most spoken language in the world, and third most spoken European language. The Portuguese language first originated in Spain and northern Portugal from the Latin spoken by Romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula.

Standard Portuguese is established on the basis of the dialect of Lisbon, although dialectal distinction in Portugal is not that considerable. However, there is significant difference between Brazilian and European Portuguese, from variations in phonology, to verb conjugation, and to syntax.

Due to wide colonization and migration of Portuguese across the world, the Portuguese language is widely spoken in many different parts of the world such as in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Andorra, Luxembourg, Macau, etc.

Due to the massive influence of Portugal on other countries and regions, it is easy to believe that there is a great number of Portuguese speakers in the world. However, is this reflected in the importance of the Portuguese language in commercial, diplomatic, and any other international transactions?

Portuguese has been recognized as a communication language in some of the international organizations such as UNESCO, EC, and OAS. Thus, the importance of the Portuguese language is one of the tools in order to established economic development and harmonize the social and commercial relationships between countries.

The continued oil discoveries, increased manufacturing and exports of various agricultural products has led the economy of Brazil to be the powerhouse of South America. Thus, the increasing importance of the Brazilian economy today is reflected in the vital role of the Brazilian Portuguese language in the world economy.

Moreover, like, other big western countries like the U.K, France, the U.S and Germany, Portugal presents an important role not only to the Portuguese speaking countries but also to the entire globe. The Portuguese were the first important European power to project themselves, their language and culture across the Atlantic, and hence to into the world at large. The Portuguese language has a great distribution in the world history.

Learning the Portuguese language can thus be an important skill and can open doors to a range of employment and business opportunities. Obviously, Portuguese is one of the greatest languages of the world, and thus, learning the language can be part of a world-class education.

Languages are unique, and that is why the most effective way in dealing with important transactions the different countries is to communicate with the locals or target audience by using their mother tongue and respecting the value of their culture and heritage. So, start learning Portuguese now!

For centuries, Spanish was the official language of the Philippines. Spain has recently offered some help in restoring the status of the Spanish language in the Philippines. Is this initiative to be welcomed and supported?

If you are going to learn another language, then why not try learning Chinese? Chinese is comparatively harder than any other language in the world. However, you may be happy to hear that one fifth of the world's population speaks the Chinese language.